The debut feature from Gibrey Allen, Right Near the Beach, was one of our favorite films at the Pan African Film Festival 2020 in Los Angeles. It builds on the themes of grief and homophobia in Allen’s 2011 short film Excuses for Jeffwith a unique visual style and soundscape which makes you feel like you’re in the film, right next to the characters.
So we’re excited to present a brief interview with Gibrey Allen himself. Scroll down for the interview, and be sure to follow Gibrey Allen on Instagram (@DearMayFilms) for updates on Right Near the Beach‘s release. You can read our review of Gibrey’s debut feature here.
First of all, what inspired you to become a filmmaker?
Before I started making films I was acting. I was always interested in film-making but the drive to create better roles than what I was been offered was the impetus.
I found that in my first project Excuses for Jeff. The end to end creative process was a both a great challenge and joy. Living every aspect of the film-making process gave me a greater purpose than playing a character. Creating and having control of how story is told, particularly stories about the black experience, is important. Stories that celebrate or show true conflict, or stories that aren’t trivial, are important to me. That is my film-making mission.
What drew you to the story of Jeff and homophobia in Jamaica?
Homophobia in Jamaica unfortunately is a very real and prominent thing. The music can sometimes inform this, as well as religion, laws and politics which in turn normalizes homophobic thinking. It makes you forget what every human being wants; love and acceptance. Migrating from Jamaica to New York, where sexuality is varied and open, made me see the LGBTQ community not for their sexual interactions but for the people they are. With the story of Jeff I wanted to tell a very human story, not the usual approach I have seen in films and documentaries. To tell and move a story with cinema; the music, the sound, and visuals is what I love about film-making. I didn’t want to lecture with this film, I wanted to appeal to the heart.
How was filming in Jamaica?
Filming overall was a good experience. Most of the issues stemmed from a budgetary stand point; a smaller crew and not being able to get all the locations we’d hope for. Early on we figured we’d embrace these things, looking at what we did have and use that to make an even more intimate story.
Did having Excuses for Jeff help in the production of Right Near the Beach?
Yes. Knowing the area and landscape helped. Forehand knowledge of some of the challenges and logistics, such transportation and accommodations. It also helped with the writing process because I knew which characters to tell the story best through.
How did you develop your process for your first feature film versus making you short films?
The feature was the same approach as the shorts. Not necessarily by design but because the feature was shot in three different trips over a year and a half. The scope of things didn’t become so grandiose and production didn’t become a huge moving thing.
What informed your visual style and soundscape for Right Near the Beach?
I want a voyeuristic view into the life of Mr. Jacob, the father. Almost like you’re eavesdropping on something you’re not supposed to see, someone in deep pain and mourning. The movement of the camera to react violently when he’s angry, the movement slowing down in the quiet and pensive moments. Terrence Malick’s visual language was a great reference and also Lance Hammer’s Ballast.
We embraced the nature sounds; the flora and fauna that are natural to the farm and rural setting. Quiet moments were also very important so you had time to feel and get pulled into the journey. For the Mike character we used more post-production sounds, sounds that call back to his past and childhood. More mechanical sounds which underscore the demons he’s living with.
What challenges did you face in building the style into the film?
The main challenge that we found was that we didn’t have lots of coverage on shots. With the one-take approach that we primarily used we had to shoot until we got the take that worked. This was also magnified because the cast were all local players. There’s a bit of safety in having full coverage, you can cut away to another angle or to other subjects if something doesn’t work with a particular take.
Do you feel like you made the film you set out to make, or did your vision for the film change in the film-making process?
Yes, the overall idea and feel of the story came through. However, the film process was very fluid and organic. We had to embrace everything that came along. Weather for example was a big one. It’s a tropical climate so it would rain or get overcast. Rather than waiting for these things to pass we used them to heighten moments in the film.
How is your release going so far?
No release yet as the hope is to build an audience and buzz through festivals before we take that step.
Where can readers catch the film next?
Not sure yet as COVID-19 has affected the festival run. Follow @DearMayFilms on Instagram for updates.
Do you have any projects in the works?
Yes, currently in pre-production on the next feature, also set in Jamaica. Can’t give much details yet but I can say it’s going be in the western style.
What films, books, music, art can we look up to get to know you better?
Films: The cinematic language I like are that of Terence Malick, Lars Von Trier, Steven McQueen (Please watch Hunger), Thomas Vinterberg. Pretty much anything that Roger Deakins and Emmanuel Lubezki photographs.
Music: Tons of Reggae; Beres Hammond, Peter Tosh, Bob Marley, Ken Booth, Toots and the Maytals. Blues, Folk music and anything that promotes me keeping my beard.
Follow Gibrey Allen @DearMayFilms on Instagram for updates on where to watch Right Near the Beach. You can read our full review of Right Near the Beach here.
Delphine’s Prayers features a young Cameroonian woman baring her traumatic life story for the camera. In a personal one-on-one interview she recounts the death of her mother, her rape at 13, and her subsequent abandonment by her father which led her too an early life of prostitution to support herself and her daughter. She ended up marrying an old Belgian man that brought her to Europe. She came with some hope of a better life, but that has since dissipated, leaving her in poverty again.
The whole film is shot in one room in Belgium with each of the ~10 segments centering Delphine in the middle of the frame. She’s the only character on camera in this documentary until the very last scene. She’s also the only one who speaks, discounting a few prompts from the director to guide her life stories. Without any other characters, and no cuts away from Delphine, the film’s focus is completely on Delphine, leaving no room for the viewer to get distracted from her storytelling. It makes the documentary feel much more intimate – especially as Delphine is incredibly open throughout the film – but also sometimes a bit intrusive as it feels like her traumatic life story is being exploited to represent a bigger message.
The bigger message is to present Delphine’s traumatic life as one example of a generation of young African women that have been crushed by patriarchal societies at home and abroad. This message is brought together at the end of the film in a short scene in which the director talks over a visual of Delphine braiding her hair, speaking of their friendship in Europe. Because of their different backgrounds, they wouldn’t have crossed paths at home in Cameroon. However, in Europe, they’re both just seen as Black African women – reminders of Belgium’s colonial past.
Whilst it does feel a bit exploitative at times, delving into a wide range of stories from Delphine’s traumatic life, Delphine’s Prayers does give a voice to one Black African woman in Europe to represent a part of the African immigrant experience in Europe.
Rewind and Play is an incredibly uncomfortable example of how the Black experience has been written out of history. Alain Gomis digs up the outtakes from an interview Thelonious Monk did with French state television in 1969. It reveals that behind what perhaps appeared to be a simple profile of a Jazz musician, is a heavily edited, whitewashed version of one of the genres largest names. His talent and experience is deliberately reduced to a few stereotypical nuggets to fit a white European audience.
Initially, you might think that Thelonious Monk is just shy, from the short answers he gives to the interviewers questions. For example, he barely responds to the interviewer when asked about his first experience in Paris. However, as the film progresses, it becomes clear why Monk isn’t responding. He’s actually already answered the question multiple times – telling the interviewer that he faced discrimination despite being the top billing at the Paris Jazz Festival in 1954, but the French interviewer doesn’t want to hear it. He dismisses his experience of racism as ‘not nice,’ ‘derogatory’ words and keeps asking the same question to get Monk to lie.
He gives short answers as he’s not allowed to say anything else. His life and music are defined by his race, but he’s prohibited from mentioning it. In order to enforce the ‘color-blindness’ of France, the interviewer and state TV have written Monk’s life instead of allowing him to tell it. As they edit out everything he says, the interviewer ends up telling the French TV audience Monk’s life instead. Monk’s experiences have been turned into cookie cutter pieces of his life to be digested by a middle-class white audience.
The short answers, just like the shots of Monk leaving the stage after his piano pieces, also convey his justified frustration. Unfittingly for the celebrity he is, Monk is captured like an animal at the zoo, turning him into a token of fluke Black genius rather than celebrating his genius completely. He’s lit up with a ton of lights, causing him to sweat profusely, and then the camera zooms in for extreme close ups as if analyzing his anatomy to try and find something to prove his inferiority. He’s the celebrity, but he’s never offered a drink or anything to make him more comfortable. Instead, it’s the white interviewer in the position of power, leering at him whilst leaning over the piano and mandating how to respond to his questions and what to play. French TV want to take his music and separate it from his life. There’s no respect for him as a person.
Alain Gomis manages to brilliantly bring out the awful experience Monk faced in Europe through the outtakes of this French interview. He reveals that there is often much more value in the outtakes than the actual chosen footage. By highlighting this injustice, Gomis forces viewers to question all portrayals of Black celebrities and experiences by the media.
Have you ever wondered what it is like to run an art-house theater chain in the film capital of the world? Here’s our conversation with Greg Laemmle, the President of Laemmle Theaters, a family owned business that shows art, international, and independent films in Los Angeles.
Great to meet you Greg! How did you get into film distribution?
I went off to college at Berkeley to study Marine Biology, which is not best suited for the film business, but at the time there was still a thriving repertory film circuit with three or four theaters in town and film societies. My father gave me a pass to the UC Theater, operated by Landmark, and I figured that if I could get my studying done during the course of the day that would leave me free in the evening to see movies. I caught up on a lot of movies and realized how much I loved film. I still have that degree in marine biology, but shortly after that I realized that I would be moving in the direction of the family business.
Was your father, Robert Laemmle running the business when you were deciding?
Yeah, my dad was running it at the time whilst my grandparents were still alive. I was doing a few other jobs coming out of college but my grandmother got upset and pulled me into the theaters.
What do you like most about the job. It sounds like you’re doing everything, including picking the movies and managing the distributor relationships?
It’s kind of how we’ve always done it. It’s probably not the smartest thing, but I really love seeing the movies, working with the distributors, figuring out what to play and where to play it, and how best to get an audience to see it. Growing up working in the theaters, you see first-hand the impact that movies have on the faces of people coming out of the auditorium. So that idea of sharing and exposing people to something is really quite powerful and enjoyable.
Also, as we’ve gotten into the business, I’ve enjoyed working with communities to develop arts and entertainment districts. Asking how a movie theater fits into that world? How does Los Angeles evolve as a community? Figuring out where people are going, spending their leisure time, and how they are getting around. All those kinds of things. Running a Theater chain is a full-fledged opportunity to engage in urban development and the role the arts play in it.
A few of your theaters, such as the Monica Center and Royal are very close to other theaters. Do you think it is better to have more theaters in your area?
It’s a fine line. Sometimes you want some other theaters to help create the movie-going audience. The complexes we are building are not that large or historically built so at some level you know you’re going to be sharing the audience. You have to ask how many screens does it take to provide what the community wants. For example, we’re the only theater in Claremont. With only 5 screens there, it was difficult as there was always someone who was asking why we weren’t playing films x, y, or z. So that indicates a need for a higher number of screens in Claremont. In the current environment where there is a reduced number of commercial films coming from the major studios post-pandemic, you see the big movie theater chains such as AMC playing more art films, which becomes more competition for us. I don’t know if there is a magic number. If there are 12 screens in the community, it depends on how they’re programmed. In those kinds of situations, if that theater is ignoring the art films that are out there, then there is a need for something more.
The Laemmle Theaters are synonymous with art-house, independent, and international films. Why was this lane picked and why have you stuck with it?
It was a niche that was available. If you were not able to play commercial films, which may have been more lucrative, you were looking around to see what you could play. From a business standpoint, if you have an opportunity to play art and foreign films that other people are not playing, or play them in an area where they’re not being seen, or just by making a commitment to playing those types of films and creating an audience for them that becomes a business decision. Did that decision happen to mesh with a preference for those type of films; absolutely. I don’t dislike Hollywood films, but there is a world of cinema out there and being able to bring it all to Los Angeles became good business for us.
Well, it goes up and down. There are a lot of factors. It’s not that audiences have soured on these types of films, but we’re dealing with certain challenges coming out of the pandemic that are to a certain degree outside of our control.
I thought you navigated the pandemic well. You were quick to set up the Virtual Cinema which allowed an audience to continue to watch international and independent films. What was your perspective on the Virtual Cinema? Did it help or was the benefit very minute?
Very minute due to complicated rights issues in streaming. As much as distributors wanted to support our activity, they weren’t able to or there were competitive pressures. The Virtual Cinema was an opportunity to stay engaged with our customers about film but the numbers weren’t significant. In the post-pandemic period, that fell off even more and we were faced with a challenge to get people back in the movie theaters, so we decided to stop taking the content online. It’s not that it was losing a ton of money, but it wasn’t making much money and was taking energy away from what we really wanted to do which was getting people back in the movie theaters.
There are still challenges right now. Infection numbers are currently climbing and there is an audience that is very scared of getting sick. We’re seeing our audience change as a result. The older audience that used to be the most reliable for supporting art-house cinema, is still not back and may not come back. This is impacting the kind of films distributors are wanting to support theatrically. This will have an impact on the kind of films that get made.
Local film criticism has also declined. We’re sympathetic as local papers have their challenges too but it has severely impacted the ability of people to find out through independent sources what is playing and worth seeing. Obviously you can go on our website to see what we’re playing, but if you’re not the type of person that goes to websites, how are you getting that information about what is playing. It used to be that when you would open the Friday paper, you could see half a dozen or more film reviews of everything opening that day in Los Angeles and you could read about films you hadn’t heard about and potentially decide to watch that movie. When you are searching for reviews on Rotten Tomatoes or other sites, the assumption is that you are searching because you know what you are looking for and the process of discovering smaller films is made more difficult.
Apps like Letterboxd help but require a degree of technical comfort to understand that if you rate the films you’ve seen, the algorithm will start suggesting other films that you might like, and you will find out about that small Romanian film because you liked another Romanian film. A certain audience understands this and another does not. We need to build connections with all types of audiences and it’s taking longer than we would like. It’s partly because we’re still not in an environment where we’re entirely done with the shocks of everything.
Is the younger audience back to pre-pandemic levels?
It has recovered quicker and arguably accelerated. You can see that in the numbers – some theaters are doing as much business or more than they did before due to a younger demographic and the films we program there. The numbers are just super strong. Poor Things doing as much business as The Favorite is a testament of this. The younger audience is back and stronger than ever and hungrier to see these types of films.
Does this impact how you program your theaters?
It impacts distributor decisions about which films to acquire, how to support those films, and which way to release them. If distributors are not acquiring or supporting those films in the way that they’re used to it has a downstream impact. Print advertising has declined. I don’t want to sound like a Luddite or a person who’s not moving on, but there were lots of audiences that did respond to print advertising because they were not necessarily being reached in any other way and you could argue that this audience no longer knows what is playing or they’re not being informed through that manner that was most familiar to them. How do you reach that audience? Can you reach that audience? What are the other means of doing that? It’s not that this audience is totally gone, but the numbers clearly show that it’s only back to a certain degree.
How do you find all of the films that you program at the Laemmle Theaters?
It is generally distributors bringing films to us. I wish I had time to do attend more film festivals, but I try to pay attention to what is playing at the major festivals and networking with festival programmers and exhibitors. We tend to be very open to working directly with producers, but it does mean that they have to come to us and present something and we’ll figure out how to play it. If your film is not acquired by a distributor, it’s not over, but you have to take your film hat off and put your film seller hat on and do that yourself
The distributors that have already acquired the films use the festivals to build word of mouth. Even with the Palme d’Or, Sean Baker’s Anora will not have the built in awareness across the general population that Deadpool & Wolverine has, and certainly can’t afford to spend as much, so savvy distributors will use every step they can to build awareness, word of mouth, so that when the film is finally put to commercial release, it has a leg up towards finding an audience and getting people to see it. They will use things that come up during the course of the release to their advantage, such as reviews, nominations, and top 10 lists, to continue to build awareness. When successfully managed, you get films like Anatomy of a Fall playing in movie theaters for up to six months.
The quality of the film ultimately speaks to an audience, but getting an audience in to see the films is important and the marketing helps.
What do you like least about running Laemmle Theaters?
It’s very challenging in this environment, but nothing makes me want to quit. I love what I’m doing. It’s just being able to find a way from challenge to success. Sometimes that’s more difficult than other times. But I ultimately believe in what we do and that it’s of value to the public, and the general public generally expresses their affection that way in terms of support and attendance. When you’re in an environment that’s in flux, it’s not always possible to pivot as quickly as you want, you have leases, facilities and other things to manage. In many cases it requires an amazing degree of patience to see things turn around. There’s not a lot that I don’t like. Some things are harder than others, that’s all.
Thanks so much for your time! One last question. I know from Only in Theaters that you’ve moved to Seattle. How is the Cinema culture in Seattle?
There’s a terrific art house scene in Seattle where I’m now living. The Seattle International Film Festival runs year round programming at four locations: the Cinerama theater, the uptown, the civic center and the Egyptian. You also have the grand illusion, the northwest film forum so there is a number of niche art house operators in the area that do terrific stuff, so I’m very fortunate to be able to access that.
For more insight into the operation of Laemmle Theaters, watch Raphael Sbarge’s documentaryOnly in Theaters. You can also catch Inside the Arthousea new video podcast from Greg Laemmle and Raphael Sbarge highlighting new releases from August 28th.
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